Heartbeats in the Dark
by Silberias
Summary: Jim Moriarty is a consulting detective and Doctor Molly Hooper is his assistant. She also has terrible taste in men, and he's tried before to warn her off of 'Sherlock from down in the morgue." Turns out that Molly Hooper's taste in men runs more towards murderous poisoners and snipers, which is admittedly worse than Jim had suspected. Molliarty, bizarre fluff.


Dark!Sherlock is fun to write. Good!Jim is more fun. Finding and cobbling together cases for Jim to have solved and the backstory behind those was fun also. And Dark!Sherlock is less assassin happy and more poison happy, too. And yes I'm a bad person for killing Mikey Stamford in this fic.

Basically I saw a photoset posted by Varjaks over on tumblr today (before it crapped out apparently) where Sherlock was the criminal mastermind, Jim was the detective, and Molly was the doctor. John was the dead-eyed sniper, too.

The song referenced later on is The Passenger by Iggy Pop. Yes. There is also Molliarty shipping, but it is sweet and adorable because of reasons.

Enjoy!

* * *

"Stay away from him, love," Jim said, not looking up from his work. Economics, on a case for his half-brother Seb—blasted dull, but he needed to understand the angle the cadre of bankers must have been coming from and Molly was being useless at it. Said something along the lines of _Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor not an accountant!_ He had wisely decided at the time to not point out that he wasn't doing _accounting_. Jim liked the fact that Molly hadn't gotten fed up with him stealing her hair care products—he liked how they smelled. You won't be able to get him to admit that he likes them because they remind him of Molly.

"I don't know who you mean, Jim."

She was seeing that man—again. He'd told her, again and again, that she should just go people-watching with him one day and he would find her a nice boyfriend. Molly would sniff and turn her head away at the suggestion, preferring to choose her own men and make her own mistakes. This particular mistake was a bit a repeat offender, however. A tall, pale man with curly hair—he had just transferred to this hospital to study pathology, working as a lab tech as well. His name was Sherlock something or other—Sherlock from down in the morgue, as Molly always said.

"Sherlock from down in the morgue."

He was very accommodating for Jim's needs so long as he brought Molly along with him, though he had the most unnerving habit of staring. At Jim. That was why he didn't like it that Molly was seeing him—if he only let them into the lab and the morgue when Molly was around, then why did he spend all of his time staring at Jim? It couldn't be a cover, because the man was perfectly able to pay genuine attention to Molly—and say the things Jim felt like he was always meaning to say to her.

"It's not any of your business, Jim. And neither were Mark, Dave, Jeff, Frank, Frank_lin_, or Winston, for that matter. I go on adventures with you, and I help you solve cases and give you a trained medical eye—and I'm incredibly grateful that you bring that to our friendship. But you aren't allowed to control who I date or see or fancy."

And that was just the thing.

Jim could feel Sherlock trying to take Molly away—the staring in the lab was almost done in a challenging way. _She's yours, and you're hers. But can you keep her?_ And Jim knew that at the end of the day he couldn't keep Molly. Molly could choose to stay or go, but there was nothing Jim could do about it. For now she was choosing to stay but for how much longer?

* * *

He couldn't see her eyes.

Jim had said he was going out for milk—Molly had been startled but pleased and settled back into watching her show on the telly. He'd known that the flat had been cased several hours ago, and he'd seen the lookouts too. He'd known that when he returned, Molly would be gone—kidnapped as all the others had been.

As he'd gone into the grocer several streets down, he'd texted the mysterious number attached to the time-bomb cases. _I've got a present if you care to play. Text me the deets._ Seb's case about the bankers—underlings in Seb's company, really—had yielded a surprising find. An ancient jade hairpin, valued at millions, safe in someone's deposit box in Seb's own bank. His brother had given it to him out of gratitude—people to fire, no more blackmail from a Chinese gang, and there was nothing that could have made his brother happier.

But he couldn't see Molly's eyes. She was blindfolded.

"Oh, John's told me all about how he used to flirt with a young thing back in university by blinking morse code—beautiful little woman named Molly. You won't be getting any secret messages," Sherlock said as he stood up on the ledge. The text had said the roof of St. Bart's—_where it all started_. Jim had of course known immediately. St. Bart's had had an _accident_ during a school tour. A twelve year old boy named Mikey Stamford had fallen out of a fifth story window to his death. It had been ruled as a horrific accident and a consequence of poor decisions on the boy's part. What had gotten Jim's attention at the time was that in all the papers Mikey's mother said he was afraid of heights—and his teacher and classmates had all been on the second floor touring the children's ward.

Unless a gregarious classmate had convinced Mikey to explore. And that same gregarious classmate had gotten a window open and double-dog-dared Mikey to peek out of it. And that same gregarious classmate must have known how _serious_ such a dare was for a twelve year old boy.

Jim had known which window, but knowing who the kidnapper-bomber had likely made off with had deduced that the roof would be the place of the showdown.

"I must say I'm glad that you put it together that I was hardly going to do this on the fifth floor." Sherlock from down in the morgue stood with his back to the long drop behind him, one arm around her waist and while his other hand covered her mouth. She was holding very still, and it seemed like she wasn't crying—and that comforted Jim. She was holding steady, as she always did.

"Let Molly go."

"Oh now—I know your name. You're _Jim Moriarty, the genius detective_ _with that woman who he insists isn't his girlfriend_. Please tell me you know mine by now."

_Holmes_. He'd gotten the name out of that American who had been killing cab drivers, though he'd had to pose as a cabbie in the first place to bait the man into trying to attack him.

"You're Sherlock Holmes. A madman."

"Oh I wouldn't say I'm mad. Not nearly as close to it as you are on a given day. Tell me, does it ever get easier?"

"Does what get easier?" Sherlock rested his head in the crook of Molly's neck, pursing his lips as he thought about it. Jim held the gun steady, desperately trying to do the math in his head to know if he could catch Molly as she fell if he managed to squeeze off a headshot on Sherlock. The other man's eyes narrowed as though he were following the same line of maths.

"Answering the letters, the moronic letters written by all the dolts in England it seems. The _dear Jim please find Snowflake, dear Jim please locate my stolen jewels, dear Jim, dear Jim, dear Jim _letters. You answer all of yours yourself, you've even answered some of mine that I sent just to test the theory. Personally I've just gotten to the point where I turn the job over to John and make him filter them for me. You'd even have this sweet thing to do it for you," abruptly Sherlock's attention turned to Molly, first giving her a kiss on the jaw and then a nip on the ear, "your hair smells like oranges, Darling, and it's driving me _mad_ for you. After we get your stupid detective to off himself, you and I are going to spend some _quality_ time like we haven't been able to in a _while_."

For the first time in the entire time he'd known her, Jim saw Molly flinch.

He took a deep breath—he would have to play along for now…

_We'll be the passenger, we'll ride through the city tonight. Let's ride and ride and ride and ride. Singin—_

Sherlock's face twisted at the phone ringtone. Well, Jim, thought, not even twitching from how he covered Sherlock's head as best he could, he would hate to have Iggy Pop as a ringtone too. This was what he wanted, though, because the tight grip the other man had on Molly was loosening slightly.

"Do you mind if I get that?"

"I'm not the one standing on a roof ledge."

"Well, that's easily fixed," Sherlock said with a bit of a shrug, pushing Molly forward as he hopped down. Jim didn't drop the gun but he did flick the safety so that it didn't fire accidentally as he dove forwards to catch Molly with one arm. She got the blindfold off herself and sat down better on the roof to take some deep breaths—Sherlock was several dozen feet away from them, yelling at someone over the phone before sinking into silence in an instant.

"Are you sure?"

Pause.

"You had best be sure, or else I'll make you regret making me turn my sniper elsewhere." He put the phone away from his mouth and turned to face Jim and Molly, "Moriarty! Kill you later! Molly, we'll have to do a rain-check on that quality time." The phone went back up to his ear and his free hand rose in the air, fingers snapping cleanly just once.

Jim had the distinct feeling that he'd had a sniper's red laser trained on his chest for longer than he would like to think about.

"Molly."

"Shut up."

"No, you need to hear this."

"Shut up."

"Your choice in men is abominable as usu—" She stood up and slapped him, and when he turned back to her—that had _hurt_—she grabbed him by the cheeks and kissed him full on the mouth. Jim didn't particularly know what to do with that until he noticed her still shaking muscles. _Relief, survivor's rush_, _adrenaline and endorphins_. He couldn't kiss her while she wasn't fully herself. If he was going to kiss Molly, he wanted to kiss Molly when she was fully in control of herself.

"Shut up," she said against his lips after a brief parting for breath.

"I didn't say anythi—" he managed at the next breath.

"Doesn't matter. Shut. Up."

* * *

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